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Social media meninists and radio shock jocks will ask - in synthetically sympathetic tones - whether this isn't just a fuss over nothing. But the pay gap isn't a generational overhang and it isn't going away any time soon. Discrimination isn't a game. Poverty isn't a game.

The pace of technological change is increasing. Which means some paradigm shift might be accelerating towards us, about to transform our lives in even more dramatic ways. To unexpectedly (mis)quote Donald Rumsfeld, right now, we don't know what we don't know. But that doesn't mean we can't shape our own future or control our own destinies. The Tories will leave all this to chance because they are ideologically wedded to outdated orthodoxies about the primacy of the market. But that isn't an adequate response to the tidal wave of change that is about to wash over us.

Later this month our new Chancellor gets the first chance to detail the government's financial plans, and there will be millions of people looking to see if social care is included. We hope that huge funding gap in social care is addressed.

However, the next few years are going to be important because the negotiations with the EU will be key in ensuring the economy carries on growing and the actual impact once we officially leave the European Union will determine if there will be a recession or not and if we would have been better off in or out of the European Union.

This year it's more important than ever to make a noise about the real living wage - a wage people can actually afford to live on - and calling on the government to put their money where their legislation is on low pay. Let's see the National Living Wage match the real Living Wage in the years ahead, rather than trying to legislatively undercut the work of campaigners.

Today, drivers won a pivotal victory in a case taken by my union, GMB against Uber that proved that they really are employees and not "partners" as the company always says... Up till now, Uber drivers have not been guaranteed a minimum wage - and as GMB, has shown, not every driver always makes the legal minimum. We're also not entitled to holiday pay and as a result, any time off means a loss of earnings, which can mean a lot when you have bills to pay. When Uber comes in and takes advantage of all the opportunities they have in Britain, they should also respect the law of the land and we have shown that today.

If the English nation really wants to stay in a union with the nation of Scotland, then they can only really do so by finding a way to also live within the European Union. That is a choice for England to make.

Labour believes that this should have been a Digital Future Bill looking at how we support the digital economy so that it works for everyone: thinking about skills and education, Digital inclusion, workers' protections in the gig economy, the ethics of Big Data and data sharing, digital infrastructure, taxation, digital public services, financing for start-ups particularly outside London, WiFi in public spaces, the progress of open data policy making and post-Brexit the ability of companies to recruit specialists. On those challenges and opportunities the Government is silent.

So just who did benefit from the sale? The government famously took a different approach to the conventional idea that you might sell to the highest bidder. Instead it followed the advice of financial institutions - which themselves bought into Royal Mail - in naming its price. It sold the shares at 330p and within a day the share price stood at 455p. At the time of course, the government said the valuation would ultimately be proved right. But with the average price since then having been even higher at 486p, the government effectively gave away £1billion in public assets to those who already had money going spare.

When Labour speaks - at the national, regional and local level - it needs to explain how government has been failing families across the board and how this can be fixed. A continued pre-occupation with austerity won't cut it going forwards.

Researching and interviewing for my new book The Brexit Club made one thing absolutely clear - the various Eurosceptic campaigns were full of huge egos, dark plotting and deep suspicion. The purpose of the book was to chart how the various Leave campaigns became established and then operated over the preceding year...

Instead of 'taking jobs', therefore, the research suggests that migrant workers are in jobs that UK workers are either unwilling or unable to do. This is nothing new; for a long time now, employers of migrant workers have consistently reported that their reliance on migrants is down to labour and skill shortages, and specifically, a difficulty in recruiting UK workers to low-skilled job vacancies. If sandwich factories and strawberry fields are full of migrant workers, in other words, it's largely because British workers don't want, or lack the skills to do, the work... The British public want a more mature and substantial discussion about immigration. We have some tough decisions ahead.

It was inevitable that the sheer upheaval of the Brexit vote would lead politicians to focus almost exclusively on those who backed Leave. Millions of Leave voters, after all, have previously been left out of politics and left behind by the economy. And it took their votes in the Referendum to make their point. But the pendulum has now surely swung too far.

About Autumn Statement

The Autumn statement 2013 will see Conservative Chancellor George Osborne set out the UK financial budget for the coming months.
Predictions and rumours for what could be read out on the date include conformation of a revival in the economy, interventions in the housing market and stamp duty and cancellation of a planned fuel duty rise.